Hi Condor; It's a tradition of the English speaking peoples to have government forms that are so complicated that they provide a form of entertainment as well as governance.
The House (435 members) and Senate (100 members) together make up the two chambers that are "Congress". The Senate's "senators" individually represent states (2 each state times 50 states = 100 senators). The House's 435 members each represent an individual "house district". House districts are always contained in a particular state. That is, they don't cross state boundaries. Each house member represents roughly an equal share of the population.
The Senate gives more power (per capita) to small states. The House is more equal, but due to rounding, some states are slightly better represented than others.
It isn't important to know exactly how laws are passed. Briefly, Congress makes them up based on majority rules in both chambers, and the President then signs them or vetoes them. If he vetoes, Congress can "override" his veto if the supporters have enough votes in each chamber (2/3 if I recall correctly).
The Democrats are the leftist party and the Republicans are the rightist. US elections are almost always "winner take all" (there are exceptions in individual states). This fact suppresses the viability of splinter 3rd parties. For this reason, the Democrats and Republicans espouse policies that are not significantly different, as compared to, for example, the differences in policies espoused by the Communists and Fascists splinter parties in a typical parliamentarian election. Instead of forming their own parties (though they sometimes do this), American nut cases instead choose to vote Republican or Democrat depending on which type of nut case they are. There has been support for a 3rd party off and on over the years, and there was a time before the Republican party existed (that is, it was once a 3rd party). Support for 3rd parties is usually from nut cases that are unable to make themselves vote for either of the two major parties.
Why they color the Democrats "blue" and the republicans "red" is impossible to guess. During the American Civil War, it was traditional for the Republicans (i.e. Northern states) to wear blue, while the Democrats (i.e. Slave states) wore gray.
The Republican party is traditionally the party of the brave men in the military, intelligent businessmen, traditional farm interests, and the dangerously religious.
The Democratic party is traditionally the party of hard working laborers, diverse ethnic minorities, lazy people, and criminals.
There are interesting exceptions to these generalizations. For example, dangerously religious Jews used to vote Democratic. And some ethnic minorities (particularly Cuban) vote Republican. Since the Republican party was responsible for the freeing of the slaves, they once received nearly 100% of the black vote. Around 1932 the blacks switched to Democrat. Maybe that would be good point to guess that marks the moment when the direct effects of slavery in the US had declined to 1/2 its original effect.
[Edit: The senators serve staggered terms in order to give the Senate continuity between elections.]
-- Carl
P.S. I usually vote Republican, but this election I'm pissed at Bush so I'm instead abstaining. A few weeks ago I was so pissed that I was talking about voting Democratic (shudder). |
